In my paintings and installations shiny, reflective materials allude to queer identity, sexuality, and fantasy. Enticement, yearning, and romance are portrayed in realistically painted images. As an artist, I tell a story of desire and self-actualization through a radically nurturing relationship to my body and my being. My aesthetic is inspired by my matriarchal lineage, kitsch expressions of love, stolen glances at Dad’s hidden porno magazines and the representation of the sexualized female body in historical European figure painting.
Oil paints, luxurious fabrics, glitter, and sequins are combined in dream-like compositions of sexual affirmation. The images depict the soft focus and dramatic lighting of pornography, reflections, sex toys, and the self-empowering and self-pleasuring female body. I want my paintings and installations to challenge those whose gaze on them to consider hedonistic impulses, repression, consumption and sexual attraction.